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Your Brain Wants to Know: Why Did This Simple Video Go Viral?

My friend Jeanne has some ideas about why this video was viewed tens of millions of times in less than a week. One of her ideas is: the Plague of Screens all over contemporary planetary culture has so starved humans for real contact – i.e. Contingent Communication – that anytime a small smattering of it show up, it presses our Yearning Button – our yearning to be clearly seen, deeply heard, fully felt … and lovingly responded to. To watch the video, hit the words “CLICK HERE” right above the picture in this link:

Wisdom teacher Jeff Foster seems to have a good idea about what makes this video so compelling to so many people as well (it’s also why I’ve written six “instruction manuals” for personal practice). Here’s an excerpt from a recent post of his …

LOVE: WHEN THE NERVOUS SYSTEM REJOICES

The most beautiful quality of all in a human being, in my humble opinion? The ability to listen deeply to another.To listen from Presence. From stillness. To listen without trying to fix someone, or change them, or ‘save’ them. The ability to allow another to be exactly as they are.

Not giving unsolicited advice. Not lecturing them about the latest psychological research or the “most true” spiritual teaching. Not trying to mold them in your own image, manipulate them into matching a concept of who they “should” be. Not projecting your own trauma – or traumatic answers – all over them. Just listening. Listening with an open mind and an open heart and a receptive nervous system. Allowing them to breathe, to express, to weep, to question, to be completely unique, to expand into the space, to discover their own truth.

I have met world experts in intimacy, relationships and honest communication who are unable to do this. I have met spiritual gurus, so-called “enlightened masters,” expert psychologists and life coaches who are utterly unable to do this. I have met popular teachers and authors on “listening from the heart,” “holding space,” “pure awareness” and “embodied spirituality” who are completely unable to do this.

It is a rare gift – the ability to allow others to be exactly as they are. Broken. Whole. Sad. Angry. Afraid. Lost. Awake or asleep. Whatever. To listen to them with every fiber of your being. To receive them through the senses, like the wild animals of the forest. To swaddle them in undistracted, fascinated attention. To envelop them in a silent, warm Presence. To make them feel – in those precious moments that you are together – like they are the most beloved One in the whole Universe.

When you sense this kind of sacred listening from someone, it’s unmistakable.It cannot be manufactured. It cannot be faked. It is utterly rare and holy. It is nothing less than unconditional love.

Your nervous system senses it, and rejoices.

What’s your own sense about why this video might have gone viral so quickly?

I with Jeanne on this one, Mark. A plague of screens. I see it in my own evening aloneness, combing through the YouTube subscriptions looking for signs of life. Plenty of communication, yet precious little connection. It’s why many folks are in the streets of other countries protesting corporate/government malfeasance, by way of precious few here in North America.

Great post today with a wondrous rapport between this father and son combo.